Canelle and Valkom took a turn around the promenade deck. They were two days from their destination, and they’d yet to discuss their plans for when they docked.  Not for lack of trying. Canelle would prod, and Valkom would start, only to get distracted by whatever had been on his mind the entirity of their journey.

He didn’t want to be alone. 

“Are you superstitious?” he inquired suddenly. “Honest. Don’t lean one way or another for my sake.”

The woman reflected on her life so far, and asked for clarification, “Are you asking me if I believe in ghosts, or if I believe in fate?”

“Hm, you’re right, there are different avenues of superstition.” He obliged, “The latter, I think. Premonitions, fortune-telling, destiny, that falls under that correct?”

He stopped walking, turning and holding on to the railing, as he looked out onto the blue-green river. The cool breeze fluttered through, giving the air a taste of the crested irises along the riverbank. Canelle recognized them because they common in her hometown. 

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve had both good fortune and bad fortune in my life. But I wouldn’t call them coincidences, though, rather consequences of my own doing.”

“Hm,” he hummed again. “I don’t believe it, I think.”

Sixth love

My grandfather and my great-grandfather had done all the things Lior had said they’d done. I wasn’t a secret, in fact it was a celebrated part of our history. I’d never sat down to dissect it, or think about what it entailed. There was information out there about the allocation of funds for the massive project, I’d just have to look for it. Only I didn’t know if I wanted to. 

The memories I had of my late grandfather were good ones. He was easy to talk to, unlike my father, and he’d never made me feel stupid for asking questions. 

I kinda wished he were alive, so I could ask him about the mine. 

That was then. Now I know he would’ve lied to me.

I caught him in a white lie once, when I was eight. It was nothing serious, and it didn’t taint my relationship with him because even then I knew that he lied to spare my feelings. 

I came to a halt at the end of a street in the lower quarter of Zapide. I’d come this way many a time, and today it looked different. I’d either took a turn a street too late or a street too early, I decided, glancing behind me. 

When I turned back, I met eyes with an elderly Rudian woman sitting on a crate under a torn awning. She sat with her large arms in her lap, whittling away at a piece of wood. I was prepared to leave without acknowledging her. 

“You are lost,” her dry, aged voice broke through that thought. 

“Maybe I’m not, maybe I am,” I said squinting at her, ignoring her now would bear no fruit. “Maybe I want to be lost.”

“But you don’t want to be lost here.” She smiled, her teeth straighter than he imagined. “You are afraid of the Ruda, you and your predecessors.”

“I’m not afraid of the Ruda.” I wasn’t. I didn’t trust them, but I didn’t fear them. I was too arrogant for that. 

“Then let me do a reading for you. Perhaps it will help you be found.” She scooted a small stool towards him with her foot. It protested against the torn cobblestone. 

“That’s not even good grammar.” I rolled my eyes, taking a seat.

“My greatest apologies. Tell me, how many languages do you speak?” she asked with a smugness only old people could get away with.

“I know some words in Dofev,” I informed her.

“How is your grammar in Dofev?”

My mouth twitched, “Fair point.” I looked around us curiously. “How does this work? Where are your future magic cards? Or is this more of a ‘look-at-my-palm-and-tell-me-who-I-marry’ thing?” I held my palm face up towards her. 

She slapped my hand down, and snapped, “You will marry a Rudian woman.”

“Well, you’re off to a rough start, I’m pretty sure my betrothed is from Idon.” 

“You can marry more than once, child.”

“I’m not a child,” I said, rolling my eyes again. “And I’d much rather only live through one wedding, thanks.”

She half-scoffed and half-laughed, pushing a woven basket towards me. “Pull a bracelet out of the basket by the string end.” 

Without looking in the basket, I shoved my hand and felt through the knots of beds until I found an end. When I pulled it out, the string of beads was shorter than I imagined, and the old woman made a note of it. 

“Is it bad?” I exclaimed in alarm. I was only twelve, and I couldn’t die without beating my father at Little Weapon. 

“Not necessarily. Not all ‘end’s are a bad thing. The ‘end’ of a bad thing, for example, is a good thing. As well as, the ‘end’ of you being lost.” She felt the markings on the first blue bead and nodded. “Ah, a caution. Blue means you want to avoid taking the warning literally. Your end will not be literal.”

I had yet to buy into any of this, but was still somewhat relieved by her explanation.

She moved on to the next bead, a gold one with an iris painted on it. “The eye of gold, the man who only sees gold, is an ill man. Do not be that man.”

“What does that mean?” Instinctively, I thought about the mine. 

 “You want to avoid shortcuts, or easy solutions. If amends are to be made, they cannot be monetary. If you are to take on a journey, walk or swim, don’t take a carriage, or a boat.”

The next bead was a red one that looked like two beads melded together, “There are many outcomes, one, far better than the others. The beads will guide you to the best outcome, but they cannot make the decisions that will get you there for you.”

The bead after that was a small white, glossy bead with embossed markings. “You wronged someone outwardly, within the last year. White means a stranger. Something bigger than a white lie, but nothing like a crime either. The transgression may have been of little or great consequence.”

Fati came to mind first, and while I did dislike her, and she likely knew it, I’d yet to wrong her. She also wasn’t a stranger. The Rudian boy from the marble game had been a stranger… The incident hadn’t affected me that greatly. We were grounded, but as you know, we were really good at getting grounded. 

She had moved on to the next bead, a dark violet, cube shaped one with rounded corners. “There are two dice rolling in a cup, the outcome of one does not affect the other, but both will stop rolling when the other does.”

I blinked a lot at the affectation of her blabbering. “Wait—what? Two dice? Stop trying to sound more impressive than you are and get to the point.” 

She frowned and squinted her eyes. “Two of your predicaments have nothing to do with one another, despite seeming like it.”

“What predicaments? The ‘predicament’ you’re referring to is already resolved. And the other predicament isn’t even my own—” I stumbled, reconsidering how much I’d revealed about myself to the strange woman. “I’ll just have to deal with it eventually… Do your beads tell you what happens if I don't deal with my predicaments, I’m beginning to lean towards not really wanting to.”

“As I said, there are many possible outcomes, the beads point to one that benefits you the most, not necessarily the greater good. Do you worry about the greater good often? You are only a kid, you shouldn’t be concerned with such matters.” 

The darks of her eyes became little dark points, and I wondered if the beads would tell me a different story if she knew who I was. That the person across from her came into the earth from the womb, stripped of everything that would allow him to be a ‘kid’. All efforts to push through the boundary, resulted in the same way, our laughs and memories stifled. The embers of young adulthood stomped out and drowned in water. 

I wasn’t chosen by god. 

I was a mortal like any other, so why did I have to have all the answers? 

Seventh love

I had seen the boy from the marble game before, a number of times actually, and every time we did this awkward dance of keeping to our own side of the market square. He never outed Lior and I, and I suspected Lior might’ve spoken to him on the manner because she never worried about it, and normally she was the sort who would. 

It took running into him twice for me to work up the energy to say something to him. A lack of courage wasn’t the issue, I didn’t fear him or the consequences of not making amends. Perhaps it was a lack of apathy? Because in my mind, the event had been resolved, and the old woman didn’t know anything about me or my life. I came to the conclusion that it wouldn’t hurt to cover all my bases. 

“Hey, do you have a minute?” I mumbled, standing over him. He had just concluded a game of marbles with another kid. 

The boy jumped to his feet in alarm, and put his hands out conceding, “Sorry, I got to go—”

“Wait—” I latched onto his jacket. “It’ll only take a second, I want to apologize–”

He stopped and faced me, his face scrunched up in confusion. “For what?”

“For what I said to you that day, the slur. I didn’t know what it meant. Well, actually I did—What I mean I didn’t know the power of it, and it was wrong for me to use it ever.” My face was probably red, and I was internally chewing out the old hag for making me look like an idiot. 

“Your friend already apologized for it.” He looked around warily for her and muttered, “She gave me 5 Bevs to never talk about it again.” 

“Look, as much as I’d love to leave it at that, it was my apology to make, so I apologize.”

Standing there, waiting for him to accept my apology, his look of half-horror and half-disdain made me realize something.

I huffed in frustration. I didn’t want him to accept the apology because I was a prince, and he was a commoner, or because he was afraid of me or Lior. 

His shoes were ratty and old, maybe I could buy him shoes, or give him money for shoes. My only hesitation stemmed from the old hag’s comment about shortcuts and money. From what I gathered, she meant for me to sit down and get to know the kid, walk a mile in his shoes, but he didn’t seem to have an interest in having anything to do with me—

“Trade shoes with me.”

“What? No! Gross. Why?” In reflex, he glanced at my boots. 

“Mine are more comfortable.”

“Look, I’m not a charity case. And even if I were, your shoes would do nothing for me. It’s obvious they won’t fit me.” He was taller than me, so he was right in that regard. “If it clears your conscience or whatever, I accept your apology.”

I frowned, that didn’t feel as liberating as I thought it would. 

Digging my hand under my collar, I snapped off the silver chain around my neck and handed it to him. “Here. A token of my apology.” 

The idea wasn’t as half-hearted as the shoe thing, and maybe there was a monetary value to it, but the necklace had a greater sentimental significance than my shoes. It had been for my grandfather.

He recognized the silver wolf hanging on the chain and shook his head, holding it back out towards me. “I can’t take this. I’ll be jumped for it if anyone sees it, and I don’t have a death wish.” 

“Then bury it somewhere, or sell it on a rainy day. It’s yours, and I’m not taking it back.” 

His hesitation lingered. He glanced around before pocketing it. “Thanks.”

“Good talk, let’s never do it again.”

“Agreed.”